


Crushing

by howardently



Category: My Mad Fat Diary
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-06
Updated: 2015-03-06
Packaged: 2018-03-16 13:32:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3490088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/howardently/pseuds/howardently
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rae accidentally admits her feelings at the sexy party.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crushing

Rae leans up against the doorframe into the lounge and surveys the room with disdain. It’s a mess, undoubtedly, with beer cans and cigarette butts and cups strewn over every available surface. There are still people chatting in small groups all over the place, but the party is definitely winding down. The music is lower now, mellower, and she heaves a sigh as her eyes skim through the dim light and land on Finn.

He’s sitting on the very edge of the couch with his head down, his torso leaning forward over his bent legs. He’s picking forlornly at the label of the bottle of beer he’s dangling between his knees, shoulders slumped. He looks sexier than anyone has a right to, all long limbs and shaggy hair. He also looks dejected, and Rae feels the weight that’s been shortening her breath all evening press heavier. She attempts a deep breath and straightens up. He’s dejected because of her, because she’d stupidly messed everything up when they’d been in the cupboard together. That was a couple of hours ago, and he hadn’t so much as looked at her since then. He’d left the game of Spin the Bottle when she returned to her room, and while she sat through a few more rounds, he never reappeared. She’d seen him back downstairs a few times, but he’s always been across the room, in a conversation, doing something. It feels like he might as well have been across the world.  
She crosses the room slowly, stepping over a pair of pair of legs belonging to Lizard. She’s trying to give him time to see her coming, but he never even raises his head from his work of destroying the bottle label. When she gets to the couch, she lowers herself wearily to perch on the edge of the sofa beside him. Finn starts to glance up at her, but maybe thinks better of it, since he makes a jerky motion and holds his neck rigidly straight to look forward. His jaw is tight as Rae studies his profile for a long moment in silence before she decides to break the tension, try to make this somewhat better.

“I never should have let Chop do this.” She says in his general direction, but it seems to bounce off the wall of frustration he’s emitting. She waits for him to reply, and when he doesn’t she clears her throat a little and tries again. “I wanted to piss off my Mum, but no one even broke anythin’.”

He doesn’t reply, doesn’t look at her, and Rae feels small and stupid. She’d been trying to tell him, trying to unpack some of that bullshit, but she’d ended up making him feel like she doesn’t like him at all. What is wrong with her? It’s just one more thing in the list of reasons why Rae Earl is so fucked up. Instead of telling the boy you like him, tell him you don’t want anything to do with him. Great, Rae. Just fucking great. She can feel tears threatening, so she lowers her head and stares at a tear that’s forming in the knee of his jeans.

She senses more than sees when Finn tilts his head just a little, he’s loosened the rigidity of his limbs and she thinks he might be looking sidelong at her. It’s taking a lot of effort not to let the tears fall, not to show the disgust she feels with herself, so she shifts so her hair covers her face. There’s an uncomfortable silence as she berates herself, and finally Finn breaks it by clearing his throat roughly.

“Why’d you wanna piss off your mum?” His voice is rough and growly, like it’s been weeks since he last used it, and a thrill chases down Rae’s spine. It’s because he’s upset, she knows, but she can’t prevent her traitorous body from reacting nonetheless. It’s an upset voice, but it sounds exactly like what she’s been imagining his sex voice as.

Rae glances up at him, and he’s obviously still mad. His eyebrows are drawn tight, his lips curled in a sneer, and his face is still resolutely turned away from her. She mourns the loss of his careless smile from this afternoon, of the way he’d talked to her so affectionately.

“Well…” She begins, wondering how much to tell him. “I found out she’s been lying to me for, oh, my entire life.”

She looks at the tightness of his jaw again, and decides to tell it all. Maybe if she tells him something painful, he’ll be able to see that she does want to be friends, that she’s just an idiot. She stares back at the snag in his denim and takes a deep breath.

“My.. uh… my Dad left when I were little, see.” The words slip reluctantly from her lips, and she winces at the weakness and softness of her voice. She’s giving away how much it matters with that stupid voice, and she absolutely hates it. “And I thought he was just, like, far away, sendin’ me postcards from different places and shit. Like, he was just far away, but still thinking about me. But it turns out that it was my Mum sending them the whole time. Stupid, right?”

Rae takes a long swig of her drink, then stares up at the ceiling, as if she could see through the beams and plaster to the postcards hidden underneath her Mum’s bed. She feels that particular blend of humiliation and worthlessness that’s been thrumming through her blood since yesterday when she discovered the truth. She swallows against the tears that are burning at the back of her eyes, then sneers at her cup and leans over to set it on the side table. Stupid booze making her all weepy. She really really doesn’t want to cry in front of Finn, but wouldn’t that just be the perfect capper to this truly shit day? Nothing better than telling the boy you’re all stupid for you hate him and then crying in front of him about how your Daddy doesn’t love you. Ugh. She rubs a hand across her face and crosses her arms. She’s the worst, the literal worst.

Then Finn shifts in his seat so that his knee is pressing against hers, and the air in the room suddenly vanishes. That weight is back, and tears are seeming increasingly likely.

“Me mum left when I were little, too. She met some Brazilian guy and ran off with ‘em.” He murmurs quietly, and she can’t even look at him, though she desperately wants to know what expression is on his face. “She only calls on my birthday and shit. I think it might be better if I never spoke to her again.”

She’s going to cry. Fuckity fuck fuck. She makes a choking sound, trying to hold it back. Finn abruptly leans forward and swipes at the ceramic ashtray on the coffee table, knocking it to the floor where it shatters with a metallic tinkling sound.

“There.” He says decidedly, and Rae raises her red-rimmed eyes to his for the first time since the cupboard. He raises his eyebrows and offers her a weak smile, which turns into a frown after a minute when she doesn’t react. She’s still catching up, though. She’s drunk far too much, and her thoughts are slow and muddled as she tries to make sense of this disgustingly handsome boy who is alternately angry at her and comforting her.

Finally, something in her cracks, and she finds herself doubled over in hysterical laughter. She’s laughing so hard she can barely breathe, tears of delight are streaking down her face. After a moment, she notices Finn’s lower laughter entwine with hers and it makes her laugh even harder.

“I can’t believe you did that!” She manages between the peals of laughter racking her body. “Just… ‘there!’ You’re… oh God, Finn, you’re so…”

She’s laughing too hard to complete the sentence, too hard to notice the longing on his face when she trails off. Rae’s whole world has reduced to this one moment where all of these terrible oppressive emotions are being released in gales of hysterical weeping laughter. She’s never been able to do this before, never had anyone to laugh like this with. It’s always been her and her tears, or her and her razor to get it out of her skin. She’d never even imagined that it would release with her and Finn and a broken ashtray.

“Well, you said you wanted something to get broken!” He defends around the huge smile lighting his face. He’s turned his body towards hers, and she touches his arm without thinking as her laughter devolves into a fit of giggles. She wipes at her wet cheeks with her palm, tilts her head against the back of the couch as she finally allows herself to lean into its support, into Finn’s support.

“You’re bloody wonderful, you know that?” It slips out as her giggles subside, but Rae finds she doesn’t much mind. She’s weak with relief, tired from the outpouring of emotion, and it seems only natural to tell him in the wash of pleasure that she’s basking in.

It seems to sober Finn, though. His smile fades as he leans back beside her, his shoulder pressing into the cushion and his cheek resting on the sofa’s edge. His knee is still pressed against hers, and their faces are only about a foot apart. Rae feels a fleeting flash of concern at the look on his face, but it’s lost amidst her giddy relief. She feels so good right now, and nothing is going to get in the way of that.

“I thought you didn’t want to be my friend? Thought you didn’t like me?” He asks softly, and his eyes change color as they study her. He’s so serious, and Rae finds the situation absurdly comical, so she gives over to the impulse to laugh again. She thinks he maybe winces at the sound, but she can’t quite tell.

“Oh, you know that’s not what I meant, Finn.” She rolls her eyes as she laughs at him, turns her head to shake it at the ceiling in appeal. She’s not sure what she’s appealing for, but it feels appropriate. She’s got a strange floaty feeling that makes everything easy and hilarious. And good. Everything just feels so good right now. “God. It’s not like you don’t know about my ridiculous crush on you. Everyone knows. I didn’t mean I didn’t like you. I like really like you. Of course I want to be your friend.”

Rae laughs again, shakes her head at the ceiling some more, thinking about the page in her diary with his picture all surrounded by hearts. This makes her giggle even harder, and she turns to see if Finn finds all of this as funny as she does. Can’t he see how preposterous and ridiculous and hilarious it all is?

He’s so handsome, and she likes to look at him, and this seems like the time to do things she likes. So it takes a while before she stops looking at his freckles and his jaw and his big silly eyebrows and actually sees his face as whole. It takes another minute before she really takes in his shocked expression. His eyes are wide, his mouth gaping, his cheeks flushed.

And then she realizes why he’s shocked.

Fuck.

All the giddiness of the last few minutes is sucked out of her in an instant, and she feels her own face start to mirror his expression. Her eyes are bulging in shock at what she’s said, her mouth is working uselessly as she frantically tries to figure out what to do or say, and she’s probably about as red as the stupid cups littered all over the room. They’re both frozen in place, still so close together, and Rae’s body starts to shake slightly. She abruptly sits up, ramrod straight, and begins looking around the room for a distraction. Not finding one, she continues to gape numbly, then turns to look at Finn again. He’s straightening up, too, and this is bringing him into closer proximity again. And that can’t happen.

Rae shoots to her feet as she begins to panic. She looks around the room again, glances at Finn and then jerks her head in the general direction of the kitchen.

“Did you hear that?” She asks, and she knows that her voice is choked and garbled. There’s nothing to hear, she just has to find a way to extract herself from this conversation that isn’t just running from the room while screaming like a banshee the way she wants to. There has to be a marginally less embarrassing way to get out of this. Finn’s eyebrows furrow, and he looks at her like she’s maybe crazy.

Right. Like she is. She is fucking crazy. And she just told Finn that she-beast Rae Earl has a crush on him. He’s probably just as keen to get out of there as she is.

“I heard… um, a dog. My dog. I have a dog. That… ran away. And now I hear him. My dog.” Rae punctuates this utter garbage of a sentence with jerky nods and wide arm gestures. “So, I have to go get him. My dog. And… take him… to get… dog food! Yes! Dog food! I’ll just… see ya.”

She squeezes her eyes shut as she all but runs towards the back door. God, she is a twat. She hears Finn weakly call her name as she passes into the kitchen, but this only makes her increase her already frantic pace. Archie is sitting on the counter, flirting with another clueless boy, and he grins at her in greeting when he sees her.

“Alright, Rae?” Archie hops down when he takes in her face, starts towards her, but Rae just points vaguely towards the back door and legs it out. She hears him call after her too, but she is already out the door and across the tiny back garden. She berates herself with increasing vigor as she opens the latch on the back gate and slips into the dark alley.

How could she be so stupid? How could she have so thoroughly ruined her friendship with Finn in a single night? He was wanting to hug her that afternoon, and now he’d probably never even want to see her again. She’s an idiot to think that a boy that fit would ever like a blob like her. And now that he knows… Oh god, now he knows.

She’s twisted through several alleys by now, and she’s far enough from her house that she allows herself to slump against a wall and give into the tears. Just moments before, she’d been letting out all that pain in laughter, feeling blissful, and now she’s crying in an alleyway that smells like piss. And the crying isn’t even enough to get it out, it isn’t enough to release the terrible pressure of being her.

Rae slides down the wall into a heap. She pulls her knees up and buries her face in them, then leans her head back against the wall. The pressure keeps building, keeps rising, and she thumps her head against the bricks, over and over again in a soothing rhythm. The harder she slams her head, the more the pressure abates. It doesn’t hurt, not even when a piece of the brick breaks off and cuts her scalp a little. All she feels is the loosening of her chest and the soothing whack of her skull against the wall.

After a while, she hears them calling, the boys, her boys. She’s stopped crying by now, stopped moving at all except for her head against the wall. She stills completely when she hears Archie just down the next alley calling her name. She’s holding her limbs so tight and stiff that she vaguely recognizes that she’ll be sore tomorrow, but it’s all lost in the steady thumps of her head, until she stops and it all comes flooding back in. Archie’s calls are getting closer, and she knows she doesn’t have much longer on her own, so she stands clumsily and brushes off her clothes.

She can’t actually stay out here all night, she can’t really just run away. She has to go home eventually, she has to face him sooner or later. But good Lord, she’d hoped it was later. She feels woozy and exhausted, and it’s a relief when Archie turns the corner and rushes towards her.

“Rae! Thank God!” Archie says as he jogs towards her. He hugs her tightly, then pulls back to examine her. “Where ya been? We’ve been worried about ya. Finn about called the police. Are you alright?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.” Rae replies weakly. She’s so tired. “I just wanted some air, you know…”

Lies. It’s all lies. She thinks that maybe she’d be better off to just never tell the truth again. It’s not like it’s been going so well tonight. Maybe that backpack of bullshit is worth it.

“You’re bleeding!” Archie exclaims, dabbing at her hairline with his forefinger. The cut on her scalp has apparently run a bit. But cuts on the head always bleed a lot. I doesn’t mean anything, doesn’t mean it’s bad.

“Oh, yeah, I fell.” She lies smoothly. It’s so much easier than the truth.

“Well, let’s get you home, yeah?” Archie wraps his arm around her and leads her back towards the main road. She doesn’t really want to go back to what waits for her at home, and she tries to explain this, but Archie’s eyes are wide and alarmed, and his arm is warm around her. She hadn’t realized she was as cold as she was until her shivers subsided.

It’s slow going, and Archie is mostly silent on the way home. As they approach her street, Rae begins to drag her feet a little. What will he say? Will he look horrified and disgusted? She’d told him about her crush and then ran off screaming into the night and had to be rescued. How could she ever even look at him again? It’s all so humiliating. Archie seems to sense her reluctance, and he tightens his grip on her as they walk up the steps.

The house is warm and dark and mostly quiet as they walk in. They walk past sleeping bodies strewn everywhere, and Rae does her best to force her numb feet not to step on anyone. In the kitchen, the gang springs up in a tumult as they enter. Chloe throws her arms around Rae, and Rae chuckles weakly as she shrugs off her friend and sits down.

“Omigod, Rae! We were so worried! What happened?” Chloe’s voice is too loud in the confined space, it seems to reverberate around all the bodies crammed in there.

“Did you find your dog?” Chop asks, and Rae stares up at him in bewilderment. What dog? She doesn’t have a dog. This is all so confusing, and she’s so tired. Chop shakes his head in bafflement. “Finn said you went looking for your dog.”

Oh yes. Her imaginary dog. That she told Finn she went out to find. So he didn’t think she was totally bonkers. As if there was a chance of that. Rae swivels her head around to look for Finn, and finds him across from her at the small table. He’s frowning, looking at her without meeting her eyes, and Rae feels a pang of despair slice through her. This is how it’s going to be now, he’s probably never going to meet her eyes again. She shrugs helplessly.

“I… uh… I lost him. Again.” She says, still watching Finn’s eyes as they fail to meet hers. He stands suddenly and the scrape the chair makes against the linoleum is jarring.

“You’re bleeding.” He says, his back to her as he wets a towel at the sink, and the room expands back to include the other people again.

Izzy makes a sort of shriek and steps closer. Chop puts an arm around her, partly to comfort her and partly to keep her back from crazy Rae. Archie is still standing just behind her and she can’t see his face from this angle. Chloe moves to touch her, but Finn pushes through their friends and kneels in front of her with the towel extended in his hand. Rae moves her legs slightly so he can get closer, and he meets her eyes and gives her a reassuring smile. She nearly falls out of her chair with the swell of relief that surges through her, and Finn puts a hand on her shoulder to steady her as his expression changes to one of concern. With his other hand, he dabs gently at the blood on her forehead, eyes back up to the line of red almost lost in her hairline. Rae studies his freckles and his eyelashes. She’s never seen him this close before, and he looks less intimidatingly handsome like this. Like when you fly on a plane and all the sharp angles and edges of the city blur into constellations of shapes and colors the further up you get, until you can barely recognize it as anything other than earth.

She’s so tired. She can feel his breath on her cheeks, and her eyelids start to drift closed. Finn clucks a little as he traces the blood further up her scalp, asks what happened, but his voice seems far away. She thinks she hears Archie reply, “She says she fell.” But it’s all pleasantly hazy, and Finn’s hand has moved from her shoulder to her neck so he can hold her head steady. It’s so easy to close her eyes and picture it the way she wishes it was happening, to see him angling in for a kiss rather than to wipe up her blood. It’s all lies, but it’s so easy, so she lets it happen, lets herself get carried away in the fantasy that will never come true.

“Rae, Rae. Wake up.” She jerks to, sits up straight and nearly smashes her forehead into Finn’s nose because he’s hovering so close. But fortunately, his reflexes are better than hers, and he leans back with a chuckle. “C’mon, girl. Let’s get you to bed.”

Rae nods muzzily. This is all part of the dream, she thinks. She’s had this one before, too. Where Finn takes her upstairs and tucks her into bed, and then tucks in to her. She hums in acknowledgement and smiles as he offers her his hand to stand. The kitchen is empty and there are fairy lights twinkling and low, dark shapes scattered around as they pass through towards the stairs. Finn’s still holding her hand, he keeps looking back at her with a goofy smile, but it’s all perfectly natural in the dream. Why shouldn’t he hold her hand and lead her upstairs? There’s music playing in her room when they enter, and again it makes perfect sense. Of course there’d be music playing. She drifts towards the bed, surprised when he drops her hand and doesn’t immediately follow. The fuzziness gets a little sharper, and it’s unpleasant, so she steps closer to him and runs her hand down his arm and twines her fingers with his again.

Finn’s looking startled, and again the fuzziness gets sharp, and she doesn’t like it. She tugs on his hand, pulls him towards the warm welcome of her bed. Where else would he go? It’s not like it’s new in the dream, it’s not like they haven’t spent countless nights twined together there. She drops down heavily, closes her eyes and murmurs in pleasure at the scent of her sheets and the softness of her mattress. Finn is standing above her and she shoots him a questioningly look and tugs at his shirt until he sits beside her.

“Won’t you stay?” She asks, and it’s vulnerable and dreamy. Her voice sounds strange, but Morrissey is crooning softly and she’s not disturbed.

Finn’s eyes are dark and unfathomable, just the way they often are in the dream, and he tugs off his boots and lies beside her without taking his eyes off of hers. She smiles softly at him when his head hits the pillow, and wastes no time putting her arm across his chest and fitting her body to his the way it’s supposed to. He seems harder than usual, not quite as pliable as normal, but she’s tired and he’s warm, so she snuggles in, takes a long whiff of his scent and drifts off.

———

When she wakes the next morning, it’s not with a hazy and gradual return to awareness. One moment she’s asleep, dreaming of Finn’s lips against her hair and his heartbeat under her cheek, and the next she’s wide awake with an arm slung across his chest and a leg draped over his thigh. She’s paralyzed for a moment, listening to the wild beat of her heart and minutely aware of every place her skin touches his. And so aware, so painfully, achingly, longingly aware of the heat and hardness of him just barely grazing her leg.

She’s stuck there, unable to move or think or do anything but feel. Feel the muscles of his chest beneath the softness of his t-shirt. Feel the gentle rise and fall of his lungs as he breathes deeply in his slumber. Feel the tug of her hair where his hand is loosely resting in it. Feel the aching of her skull and the dryness of her throat. Feel the pulsing mortification of the liberties she’d taken in her dreamy state last night, feel the horror of all the stupid things she’d said, feel panic for the inevitable blowup that was due to come. And feel, small and tiny but vital, a powerful pleasure and rightness at being in Finn’s arms.

After a while, she comes to, and begins to attempt to extricate herself from the bed. She’s very careful not to shift him, to pull her arm away slowly, but Finn mumbles in his sleep and stirs as she moves. His arm tightens around her neck, and he turns on his side to tug her closer until he can nuzzle his face in her hair. He groans slightly and arches his hips against her, grinds his erection into her stomach and Rae lets out a strangled moan. Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.

Despite everything, despite all her fumbled words and humiliating confessions and alleyway breakdowns and dreamy touching, somehow she’s ended up with Finn Nelson in her bed grinding his hardness into her. Rae thinks she might spontaneously combust, her lust for him is so powerful. It might all be worth it just to have gotten to feel that. Fuck, pretty much anything would be worth it to feel that. She sighs and tentatively moves her hips towards him again, just to see what he’ll do.

So of course, that’s when he springs awake and basically jumps out of the bed in horror.

“Shit, Rae! I’m so sorry!” Finn exclaims, moving back quickly and stepping a ridiculous four feet away from the bed, like she’s going to come after him. He looks down at the lump in his pants and swallows, then gestures wildly for a minute before folding his hands over his erection like he could hide it. His face is scarlet, and a mottled crimson splays a path down his neck. “I… I was dreaming. I dreamt that you… that we… that… Shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to… You know.”

Rae can feel her eyes widen and she lays there in a bewildered stupor, mourning the loss of his warmth. It seems cruel that he’d been all tangled up in bed with her only moments before and now he is halfway across the room, obviously disgusted with himself for getting too close to her. She feels her own cheeks flush, so she rolls on her back to look at the ceiling.

“It’s okay, Finn. I’m pretty sure I forced you into bed with me when I was half-asleep last night, so…” Rae hears herself speak and winces at the words, getting even redder than before. It’s stupidly hot in this room. “I mean, not like forced you into bed like sex bed, but like made you get in the bed… or whatever. You know what I mean.”

What is wrong with her? Every time she opens her mouth more ridiculous bullshit came out. She must have toxic word vomit. It was probably a disease. Somewhere. She wants to slam her head against the wall again. She’s such an idiot. But from across the room, Finn laughs.

She looks over at him, and finds him still obviously uncomfortable, his arm crossed over his chest and his fingers gripping his elbow awkwardly in that way he has. He’s still bright red, but he’s smiling now and something in the room loosens infinitesimally.

“At least it’s not just me.” He chuckles, running his hand along one arm, still partially covering the bulge in his pants. Rae just stares at him blankly, not comprehending what he means. He looks towards the floor when he answers, glances up at her through his fringe and she wants to lunge across the room and jump on him. “Who’s embarrassed.”

Rae sighs. Yeah. She’s embarrassed enough for a dozen people, like for twelve separate people’s entire teenage years worth of mortification, she’s got it covered. But Finn…

“Well, me, yeah. But what do you have to be embarrassed about?” Rae sits up now, and the room spins nauseatingly. She swallows back the bile and reaches up to pat at her hair. Finn looks at her incredulously, and she thinks maybe his eyes are traveling over her form in a way they haven’t before. She blushes again and he clears his throat.

“Well, ya know…” He trails off, rubs at the back of his neck for a bit. She stares blankly at him still, though the evidence of what he’s embarrassed about is pretty clear. He gestures haltingly towards his crotch and the crimson spots on his neck reappear.

“Oh.” Rae looks down at her lap and tries not to smile. She’s hit with a sudden wave of surreality. This can’t really be happening can it? Like, Finn Nelson can’t really be in her bedroom talking about his boner at the ass crack of morning, can he? It’s so weird. Completely humiliating but also kind of sweet. He’s really embarrassed by his morning wood.

“It’s not like a big deal though, is it? It just happens, right? That’s what they said in health class.” Oh God. Stop talking! Keep your big mouth shut for once in your life. She cannot believe she’s asking him questions about his erection, questions she learned about in health class. What the fuck is wrong with her? She hangs her head, squeezes her eyes shut, wishes she could suck the words right back in. Finn makes a funny sound that she can’t interpret without looking at him, and she may never ever be able to look at him again. Which is such a shame really, cause he’s so fun to look at. Her and her fucking mouth.

An indeterminate amount of time passes with the two of them locked in their own private horror.

“What time is it?” Finn finally asks, squinting at the sunlight streaming through the drawn curtains. Rae glances up at him and then towards the clock on her bedside locker.

“Umm, half seven.”

“Ugh, that’s early.” Finn groans, and she looks back to see him glancing longingly at the bed.

“What time did we go to bed?” She’s got such weird dreamlike memories of the night before, so she’s got no idea what actually happened.

“Um, after three, I think?” Finn shrugs and Rae swears. He moves a shoulder towards the bed. “We should probably get some more sleep. I think everybody else is still passed out.”

“Oh.” It takes her a second to understand that he’s asking to get back into the bed. With her. Finn Nelson is asking to get into her bed with her. It was one thing last night for her to drag him into bed all messed up, it’s another for them to be deciding to sleep together totally sober. After the boner, no less. “Oh, yeah. Right. Uh. Go on, then.”

She draws back the covers and Finn walks back towards the bed. When he reaches it though, he pauses and looks down at her inscrutably. She wonders what he’s seeing, what he thinks about her. Last night brought a lot of revelations, and it’s got to be a good thing that he still wants to get in bed with her, right? Like after all that, he doesn’t mind being close to her. Fuck, her hopes are going to get all high again.

“Are you sure you don’t mind me kipping in here with you? I could always go downstairs or summat?” His eyes are so lovely in the soft morning light, and it takes a lot of effort not to pull him into the bed with her. She has to remind herself that whatever the weirdness was last night, she can’t just go around yanking beautiful boys into her bed. She’s not Chloe.

“Don’t be silly, Finn. It’s a little late for that, don’t you think?” She marvels for a second at how cool and unaffected she sounds. Like it’s no big deal for him and his erection to get back into her bed. It’s such a big deal. Lies, lies, lies.

He smiles down at her for a second, and she tilts her head to try and interpret his expression. Smiles mean happy, but this… it feels like those first few weeks in the hospital when she had to look at cards of people’s faces and identify their expressions. She wishes he was as easy as those. He sits down next to her, and the air in the room gets strangely dense. She feels very aware of her breathing, of the movements of her chest. She lies down stiffly on her back, and he shifts around for a bit as he moves to lie beside her. Her heart is throbbing almost painfully, so she focuses on the movement of the mattress beneath her. Finn settles onto his back, then heaves a sigh and sits up to pull the duvet over them.

It gets very still in the room. Sometime in the night, the music stopped and now the silence in the room is as loud as the party was last night. Rae is overly aware of everything. She could tell you the precise color of the ceiling with the 7:42 July morning sun on it. She can smell the faint traces of smoke and beer and alley in her hair. And she is painfully and uncomfortably aware of how much space her body is occupying in the bed, of every place his body is close to hers. On her left arm, a few of his arm hairs have traversed the space between them and are tickling her skin. She holds herself perfectly still and rigid and does not let her body soften and deflate to take up even more space.

Several torturous minutes pass, and Rae considers how bizarre it is that she’d been asleep wrapped around him only a few minutes ago, when sleep seems severely unlikely now. A part of her is supremely grateful for her drunken, exhausted out-of-it self, because she’s never going to get another chance to sling her leg over Finn and listen to his heart thrum in his chest. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity, and she’s glad that she was messed up enough last night not to let her agonizing self-consciousness prevent it from occurring. Like the way it was now.

She wonders if she can tell Chloe about his stiffy. It seemed sizeable, but she’s got nothing to compare it to, so who knows. The only person she’s ever seen naked is Mrs. Dewhurst, and that was just… ugh. She doesn’t suppose that this is one penis she’ll get to talk about though, since Chloe seems to have developed a thing for Finn. She didn’t really see it anyway. Just felt it a little. Still, it feels like a huge milestone to check off on her road to sexual discovery. First cock encounter. She smiles up at the ceiling.

She tries not to let her mind wander back to last night. It’s weird to analyze Finn with him lying right next to her, but it’s hard not to replay her confession over and over again. She knows she’s making it worse with each repetition, but she finds it nearly impossible to stop. What was that expression on his face? What did it mean? She wishes desperately, fervently, that she’d been less busy looking around and staring at his freckles and she could have seen his face when she said it. She doesn’t want to consider that there might be cause for hope, but is there? He is lying beside her inside of running for the hills. That has to mean something.

“Rae.” His voice is a whisper, but the quietness of the room makes it feel like a shout. “Are you asleep?”

She bites her lip for a minute and considers. Of course she’s not asleep, but it does seem prudent to lie. She could just pretend. But she can feel her own unnatural stiffness, and she knows he’ll never buy it.

“Yeah.” She whispers back. There’s no particular reason to whisper, but it feels like it makes the moment somehow more.

Finn turns so he’s lying on his side with his face turned towards her. He tucks a hand under his cheek and brings his knees up a little, lets out a sigh as he gets comfortable. Rae mirrors his position, tries to force herself to relax. It doesn’t work.

“Rae… Can we…” Finn begins, and she watches his eyebrows as they dance around his forehead, pulling together, drawing apart, sweeping down low. “I’d like to talk to ya about last night.”

Rae tenses, waits for the inevitable. He’s going to say there’s no way he’d be with someone like her. He’s going to say they can only be friends. Or maybe that they can’t even be that, in light of her crush. She squeezes her eyes shut and tilts her face down, bracing for the bad news. A long, fraught moment passes before he speaks again.

“You said…” He stops to shake his head and purse his lips. “You said…”

Rae can’t take it anymore. The waiting for the verdict is agony.

“Can we just pretend I didn’t say anything?” She interjects, and her voice is so small that she fears it might drift away. The whole conversation is hushed and tense, but hers is the voice of someone who wishes she could fade out, and it makes her cringe. “Can we just strike it from the record, Finn? I…”

She starts to unfold the lies- I don’t really feel that way. It was just the booze. I just want us to be friends. It’s not a big deal. I don’t care that you don’t feel that way. It’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine. But something makes her bite her tongue. The lies are easier, yes, but sometimes they hurt more. It’s like putting a dirty bandage on an open wound- it’ll cover it up, but it’s probably going to get infected and have to be cut open again eventually. So she stops at asking him to forget it, lets the single tear escape the eye closest to the pillow and just hopes he doesn’t see.

He does. Of course he does, he’s wonderful. It’s part of the reason she likes him so much, because he cares.

Finn’s eyes tighten, and she can see the muscles in the arm he’s got lying between them bunch. It makes the veins pop out, and she traces her eyes down the length of them in lieu of the cares she wishes she could give him.

“Why?” He asks, and it’s growly and sad and maybe a little bit hurt- a lot of emotions expressed in a single syllable. She allows herself to study his face for a long moment, to try and understand what he must be thinking. If this was one of the cards, she’d call it confused, frustrated, upset. That’s there on his face, but why does he feel that way? What is he thinking to get upset about?

She considers his question. Why pretend like it didn’t happen? She doesn’t know, really, except that it might be easier. And she doesn’t want to give him up entirely. She wants boyfriend Finn, but since that can never be, she’s happy to get friend Finn. She really really likes friend Finn.

“Because…” Rae shakes her head against the lump in her throat, raises her shoulder helplessly. “I care about you. I don’t want to lose you as my friend.”

Finn’s eyebrows furrow again, and his cheeks get red suddenly. She wishes she could know what he was thinking, what he heard in what she said, what he read in her eyes.

“Why would…” He turns his head jerkily and looks at the ceiling for a moment, and when he looks back at her, the expression he’s wearing is one of the easy ones: he’s angry. “I don’t get you, Rae. You told me you didn’t want to be my friend. You said that, and it fucking hurt.”

“Yeah, but…” She tries to interject, but he continues on unabated.

“No, you told me you didn’t want to be my friend. I’ve been trying so hard to show you, trying to make up for being such a dick, and then all of the sudden you’re the one being the dick. And then I ask you about it, and you say you don’t even want to be friends!”

He’s still whispering, but his words are flooding over her in a deluge. It’s a weird moment, confrontational and tense and fraught with misunderstanding and hurt feelings, but it’s also quiet and personal and… intimate. She can hear all his frustration and hurt, and she feels guilty and miserable about what she’s done, but a small part of her is reveling in the fact that she and Finn are lying with their faces only inches apart, talking about their feelings.

“And then you come to me, and I’m still so pissed, Rae. But you come to me and you tell me something real. Something real about you, for once. And… I just… I wanted to make it better. And then we laughed and it was normal again, and then you told me I was wonderful? Like, you’d just told me you didn’t want to be my friend, and then you’re saying I’m wonderful and you have a crush on me and then coming up with some bullshit about your dog and then taking off in the middle of the night by yourself. Do you know what that was like, Rae? How fuckin’ worried about you I was?”

He stops for a minute to look at her with questioning and frustration. Rae holds her eyes as wide as she can so that the tears don’t slip out. This is hard, so hard, to hear, but maybe it’s the medicine that stings but ultimately cleans the wound so it can heal. He’s jutting his jaw and biting his top lip, and he’s curled his hand into a fist where it lies on the bed. She thinks about touching it, about wrapping her fingers around his knuckles to soothe some of his anger, but she doesn’t know how that will be received, so she clenches her own fist on her hip and waits for the rest.

“And then you come back, and you’re bleeding! It was like somebody punched me, Rae. But at least you was home, and then you held my hand and took me to your bedroom and basically begged me to get into bed with you. Like, do you realize what it was like when you asked me? You had this sexy little breathy voice and your eyes were all…” He pauses for a second to shake his head and swallow, then returns to glaring and berating her. “And then you pulled me down and like draped yourself all over me, and then fell asleep! And this morning, you’re playing coy and asking me why I have a stiffy? I mean, come on, Rae! And then you ask me to pretend like none of it happened because you care about me and don’t want to lose me as your friend? What. The. Fuck.”

The tears are falling now and she can’t help them, so she buries her face in the pillow so he won’t see. She’s burning with humiliation. It’s absolutely awful to see the situation through Finn’s eyes, so see herself as flighty and manipulative and flippant about his feelings. And it’s especially awful to hear him talk about her pulling him in to bed, about what he thinks is her trying to seduce him. He seems so affronted, so repulsed at the very thought of her draping herself all over him- it confirms the very worst things she’s thought about herself. Those stupid hopes that she knew would come back to bite her have exploded within her, burning new holes and leaving shrapnel.

She thinks with acute longing about the razor hidden under the loose tile in the bathroom, the pain within her is so intense that cutting seems like a viable option to manage it. It would ooze out with the blood and she wouldn’t feel so full up with it. But that isn’t an option. Not anymore. She doesn’t do that anymore, she just has to bear it somehow. She chokes on a sob and covers her face with her hand.

“Oh, no. No no no. Don’t cry Rae.” Finn murmurs quickly near her ear, and she can feel his hand hovering above her head. “I didn’t mean to make you cry. I just… Fuck.”

He heaves an audible sigh, and the mattress quakes as he shifts to put his arm over her shoulder. He rests his face against her hair and mutters soothing nonsense in her ear.

“I’m sorry, Rae. I’m sorry. Shh….”

“No, Finn. I’m sorry. I…” Rae turns her head and he pulls back to look at her, but he doesn’t move away or alter the pressure of his arm on her shoulder. She’s still crying, but it’s a quiet cry and she tries to offer some kind of an explanation. “I thought I was dreaming! And I’ve had that one before, so I didn’t know I was… grossing you out… when I pulled you into the bed. I thought it was the dream!”

Her voice breaks at the thought of his revulsion, and through her tears, she can see that Finn looks horrified, so she buries her face in the pillow again, tries to roll over so that she can face away. He’s so close, and it’s both a comfort and an excruciating reminder of how horrible and unlovable she is.

“No, Rae. No! I wasn’t… grossed out? How could I be? I… Oh god, I didn’t even tell you. I didn’t even say it, I just… I’m such an idiot.” Finn groans, and moves his hand to shake her shoulder. “Rae. Rae. I need you to listen to me.”

He shakes her shoulder again, moves closer into her space until his face is only inches away from hers. She turns back towards him, but she can’t prevent the tears from dripping down her cheeks silently. The red spots are back in his cheeks when she looks at him again, and his eyes are dark and serious. He’s frowning, and she knows that this is it, this is the moment where he lets her down gently.

“Rae, I…” He starts, gaze flickering from her eyes to her lips and back again. He frowns and swallows and starts again. “Rae, I… I like you. I fancy you, I mean. I have for ages, but I didn’t think you felt that way. I… I been trying to tell you, but you kept pushing me away. But last night… I got all… I dunno, hopeful, I guess. I… I jus’… I was not grossed out by you, at all. That’s a ridiculous thing to say, it’s totally the opposite.”

Finn smiles at her ruefully when he finishes, and Rae lies there silently agog, trying to wrap her head around what he’s said. Somewhere during his speech, his hand has migrated up to cup her cheek, and he slides his thumb along her cheekbone in a tentative caress. He watches her as she processes, waits to see how she reacts, but Rae hardly knows what to think. She can’t make sense of it, of a world where Finn has fancied her in secret for weeks.

“Are you… you’re not taking the piss, are you?” She asks finally, and her voice comes out both squeaky and croaky.

“No.” He breathes, looking sad and tender and half a dozen things she can’t quite place. “No, Rae. I fancy you. I want you.”

Rae closes her eyes to try and make sense of what’s happening. She’d just gotten what felt like confirmation that he’d never want her, and then here he is saying the exact opposite. It feels as fragile as a Christmas bauble, like if she touched this moment with more than a single finger, it’d just shatter. So, she closes her eyes and tries to hang on through the swirls and eddies of emotion that are threatening to drown her. She reaches up to touch Finn’s hand where it’s resting on her cheek.

When she opens her eyes again, his look is dark and unfathomable like the dream, and her literary brain recognizes his expression as romantic. Finn is looking at her romantically, and it’s so beautiful she wants to cry. Again. She wonders what she must look like to him, swollen and puffy and tear-stained and crazy. But he smiles tenderly, raises his eyebrows like he’s asking a silent question that she can’t fathom. She raises her own eyebrows and shakes her head minutely, and he smiles again, seeming to understand that she needs more.

“Rae, I think you’re brilliant. I like talking to ya, and I don’t like talkin’ to anybody.” He grins at her and shifts his body a tiny bit closer. “I want to listen to you go on about anything and everything, and I want to argue with ya about what to play on the jukebox and I want to make you mix tapes and kiss you while we listen to The Cure.”

It’s enough. She gets it. As crazy and surreal and bizarre as it may be, Finn actually likes her. And maybe it’s all some weird alcohol fueled dream, but either way, she’s not going to waste another minute.

Rae leans in those extra few inches in the quiet stillness of her room and presses her lips against his. She kisses him first.

It’s tentative, she’s only ever kissed Archie before and she doesn’t exactly know what she’s doing, and it takes a second before he catches on. But the instant her lips touch his, a jolt of raw need courses through her that overrides all her insecurity and self-consciousness. When Finn takes over the kiss, the hunger for him doubles, and she finds herself clawing at his shirt as she tries to pull him closer. His lips glide against hers like they were formed just to fit her. She’s lost to the perfect agony of desire, to her deep unfulfilled need for more more more of him.

He pulls back after a minute to chuckle softly, and Rae would be offended if she wasn’t so completely overtaken by lust. He’s still so close, and his laughter gusts over her face in a damp cloud. She blinks, pulls herself forcibly out of the haze, and frowns at him. He laughs doubly hard at her expression, wrinkles his nose and kisses her again.

She forgets her disgruntlement instantly, and she’s back to the red fog of desire and disbelief. This has to be the dream, right? She can’t actually be kissing Finn in her bed on a Saturday morning. His tongue glides over her bottom lip, and when she gasps into the kiss, he presses the advantage and slips it into her mouth to caress hers. The heat coursing through her is like nothing she’s ever felt, it’s ten times more powerful than what she’s experienced reading her dirty romance novels. It’s so much, so intense, that she’s inherently distrustful. Rae pulls out of the kiss, pants against his lips with her eyes closed for a minute as she tries to push back the wave of lust that’s threatening to pull her under until she loses herself and takes him like some kind of wild animal.

When she opens her eyes again, she’s pleased to discover that he’s just as affected as she is. His eyes are still closed, and he swallows heavily. She considers licking his Adam’s apple, but no, she’s trying to prevent herself from climbing on top of him and riding him until he’s nothing but dust. After another minute, he opens his eyes and smiles cockily at her. She gives him a half-hearted scowl, but she figures it’s probably ruined by her red cheeks and heaving bosom. Oh God, she’s got a heaving bosom like one of those girls in her books, like Cleopatra. She wonders if Finn would consider playing her Marc Antony, and collapses into a fit of breathy giggling.

“What’s so funny, girl?” Finn asks, and he’s grinning broadly. He reaches up to pull her hand down from where she’s covered her face.

Rae presses her lips together and wrinkles her nose against the smile that she can’t seem to keep off of her lips. He mirrors her expression, and she can’t help but giggle again. He grins beatifically and leans over to give her a series of quick, soft kisses. He moves his hand down from her cheek to ghost over her shoulder and arm, down to her fingers where they’re toying with the buttons on his shirt. He tugs on her hand, rolls to his back and pulls her flush up against him, until they’re in almost the same position they woke in, except this time, Rae’s keeping her legs fixedly to herself. If she touches any part of his cock with any part of her, she may commit a sex crime. Finn hums a little under his breath as she readjusts and settles against him, he slips an arm beneath her neck and she rests her head in the crook of his shoulder.

She’s warm and sleepy and finally comfortable. In this position, she’s less worried about the space she’s occupying, since she doesn’t have to keep herself from touching him. Finn unexpectedly bends his neck to press a kiss against her hair, and she squeezes her eyes shut to savor the moment. He’s absently toying with her hair with the arm beneath her neck, rubbing his hand along her upper back. It’s so like the dream, and Rae has that strange otherworldly feeling again. It feels so real, he’s so solid beneath her, but it feels absolutely divine to be wrapped up in him like this, and nothing ever feels this good for her.

So she does the only logical thing and pinches him on his side.

Finn jumps and howls, brings his hand down from behind his head to rub at his side. He twists his neck down to look at her accusingly.

“What’d you do that for?” He’s scowling, but his muscles are all still loose so she knows he’s not really mad. “That hurt, Rae.”

“Sorry.” She sticks her bottom lip out in a little pout and turns her face to kiss his chest where she’s snuggled against him. “I just wanted to make sure this was real.”

“Jesus, girl.” His eyebrows are still furrowed, but his face has softened somehow. “Aren’t you supposed to pinch ya self for that?”

Rae shrugs and snuggles a little closer, and this seems to be an adequate reply, since Finn wraps both arms around her and kisses her hair again. Rae smiles around a sigh. It’s not a dream this time, no matter how unlikely that seems. Finn’s arms around her are firm and heavy and hot, and it’s less comfortable to lie like this than she imagined. And it feels way better than she could have ever envisioned, because in all the dreams, in all the steamy fantasies, she’d never actually felt close to him like she does now.

Slowly, she relaxes and the warm murkiness of sleep begins to take her. Just as she begins to drift off, she hears his soft voice whispering in wonder.

“It’s all real.”


End file.
